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I can’t blame NASCAR for trying to do its own Drive to Survive given how disproportionately well that worked for Formula 1, but this move shows that they’re finally having some production ideas of their own.

First of all, the idea of bedding in with Prime Video makes obvious sense given how well their run of Cup race broadcasts went last year, and I dare say that if Formula 1 can get away with bundling U.S. race broadcasts with Apple services, bundling NASCAR with Amazon Prime seems like an even better idea.

But moreover, NASCAR just doesn’t have the same juice for a dramatic year-long documentary as Formula 1 does: There are too many drivers and teams, and those don’t have enough global celebrity star power pressure on them to make for off-track jeopardy, which is what DtS fans are really watching for. As followers of Formula 1 racing knows, the actual motorsports part barely even factors into that show, and the race events are basically just montages in it. NASCAR is all about the races, and that made a DtS-style silly season show rather boring.

This idea of focusing on the Daytona 500 will not only make for a better show that is more worth watching alongside a racing season — rather than instead of one, as much DtS watching seems to be done — it will do exactly what NASCAR needs to do as a sport and raise the profile of the races themselves as the centerpiece. Hopefully they’re thinking about this in terms of which race to focus on next, rather than just what happens in the same setting year after year.

Given that Netflix is literally the reason Formula 1 is popular in the United States, I did wonder how the move to Apple TV for U.S. race broadcasts would affect Drive to Survive. I did not expect that it would result in the show also streaming on Apple TV, and let’s be real, that is an epic win for Apple. I am quite sure that Apple dropped a bag of money that blotted out the sun in front of Netflix HQ for it, but the other terms of the deal reveal how it went. Netflix asked to stream a live race in the U.S. time zone in exchange, and they got… the Canadian Grand Prix. That’s not to denigrate that race — love that race — but it has a little bit of a logistical hiccup for U.S. race fans.

Apple: “We’ll give you 💰 to let us show Drive to Survive”

Netflix: “Okay, but you have to give us a live race that’s during the day”

Apple: “K you can have the one that conflicts with the Indy 500”

Netflix: “N… no! We want a good one!”

Apple: “K bye”

Netflix: “OKAY FINE”

— Jon 🛞 (@jon.turningfortune.com) February 26, 2026 at 2:43 PM

Pirelli takes a lot of shit from the F1 world — mostly from fans — but I think it’s hard to argue that Isola did not do an incredible job making what are arguably the most important tires in the world. Given that tires are essentially the only strategic variable left in grand prix racing, Pirelli has delivered pretty consistently through some truly wild Formula 1 regulations, and now that the 2026 product has been delivered, it’s a new era, and it makes sense to hand over the reins to a guy who has been working there since 2008.

Yeah, they have some issues with wet-weather tires, but maybe now that the floor of an F1 car isn’t a gigantic water cannon, wets will be easier to get a handle on.

Formula E driver moves will be especially interesting this year as the Gen4 car arrives next year, and it appears to be the first electric race car that truly belongs in the FIA World Championship category alongside Formula 1. If everything goes according to plan, the pinnacle of open-wheel racing in 2027 will essentially offer the world’s best drivers a choice: hybrid or electric.

2023 Formula E champion Jake Dennis has been one of the biggest prospects, as he has been rumored to be considering leaving Andretti after a drop in form over the past couple seasons. He says he was weighing multiple serious offers, but he decided to stay with the team that gave him his rookie ride. To be fair, taking a glance around the motorsport world, I wouldn’t leave the TWG stable right now, either.

Kelvin did not exactly have a vacation of a racing year last year, but he did miss an absolutely extraordinary DTM season. He was off winning other championships in the BMW M4 GT3 EVO, which was definitely the GT3 car to have last year, having driven Audis in his previous DTM campaigns. This year, he’s dropping into Rene Rast’s seat at Schubert, where his younger brother, Sheldon, won the 2022 title. His teammate will be Marco Wittmann, who has won the DTM twice. No pressure.

I have a lot of questions. Is this little tour about launching his next act in F1? Is it pushed back because of deal complications? Is it pushed back so that it doesn’t happen while everyone is watching a Drive to Survive season about him getting fired? Why did he preannounce this at all? I can keep going if you’d like.

The Joe Gibbs Racing lawsuit against former competition director Chris Gabehart is getting spicy now. Gabehart made a thundering statement about JGR mismanagement that goes all the way to the top, claiming that they’re only suing him to punish him for leaving.

And it’s clear why they want to: He’s about to go tell the world how corrupt the operation of the 54 car (driven by Gibbs’ grandson) is.

When NASCAR announced it was moving the All-Star Race to Dover, it mostly just seemed like a diss to Dover by taking away its points-paying race. That is because all the All-Star Race means to fans at this point is that they have to read another epic poem about a new, unnecessarily complicated race format.

This year, there isn’t even any jeopardy; the whole field gets to start. That reveals the transparently profit-based reason this event continues. Nobody wants to have to tell their sponsors that they paid for an optional race they don’t even get to run.

If there has to be an All-Star Race, I like Jeff Gluck’s idea of having the last-place car drop out of the field every five laps until a winner is crowned.

You may have thought we were done with NASCAR lawsuits for a while, but we’ve got a new and spicy one. Former competition director Chris Gabehart left Joe Gibbs Racing last year under mysterious circumstances, and suddenly JGR has sued him, alleging he stole competitively sensitive information for his future employers in ways that would be shockingly dumb and detectable if true — so much so that it’s hard to believe a guy as sharp as Gabehart could have done such things. He denies everything and says JGR is unwilling to consider forensic proof of a lack of evidence.

Taking things up a notch, Spire Motorsports — a team whose whole thing is taking things up a notch — came out in the wake of this announcement to counter-announce that Gabehart works there now. So in turn, JGR amended their complaint to add Spire to it and requested a restraining order to prevent Gabehart from working there for 18 months until everything is returned and assurances are secured.

I wonder if we’ll ever find out what really happened here.

I probably fall on the medium-low end of the spectrum of belief in Formula 1’s effort to become a zero-carbon-emissions sport, but the key about how any corporate structure does this is in what kinds of decarbonization projects it incentivizes. And holy crap, does this plant at VCARB’s Faenza plant count in the win column. It generates 4.6GWh of zero-emissions electricity per year, it operates water-free, it recovers heat that can cover the factory’s heating requirements, and it is quiet. Too cool. I want something like that for my neighborhood.

It seems like the NLS is trying to claw back cred after getting some bad press for some kinda “sellout” moves, but I think there’s still ample room for a new era of the N24 that’s not only cool but still unique in the endurance racing world.

I do not find this HWA car as straightforwardly cool as rolling out a Z4 GT3 for the simple reason that this is not the real car; it’s a road-going product they’re building and selling 100 of for almost $900,000 a pop. If it does, however, rip around the Nordschleife for 24 hours, I will hop in line to praise it.

I’m normally iffy on big retrospective stuff about someone who is still racing, but this is the kind of exception I make. Wickens’ legendary comeback story has already happened. He has come back. He is the legend now. Every race we get to see him fighting at the front of from now on is a bonus.

A livery has to be exceptional for me to cover it as news, but you should know that I will always cover exceptional livery news. I do not know what an “official olive oil and mayonnaise sponsor of NASCAR” is, nor am I particularly a Brad Keselowski fan, but I’ll tell you this: I love a food livery, and I love olive oil, so this car gets posted on Turning Fortune, period.

I love all the acts that have gotten IndyCar liveries through this deal, but I feel like I’m in the minority for finding all the liveries hideous. Then again, the entire concept of SiriusXM makes no sense to me whatsoever, so maybe I’m not an old enough old guy for them.

After another unforgettable weekend at EchoPark Speedway, the chat is that Atlanta is NASCAR’s best venue at present, and though I am hopelessly biased, I would have to agree.

The Truck Series race was an intense and remarkably disciplined affair that was compressed for time due to weather delays, with Spire teammates Carson Hocevar and Kyle Busch working together to learn the kids a thing or two, delivering yet another truck win for Busch. They did tandem burnouts that were both 10s out of 10. There were other notable performances throughout the field, though, including an impressive recovery drive on debut for Trans Am ace Adam Andretti. Also notable was the pretty average performance of last year’s champion, Corey Heim.

The O’Reilly Series race was utter insanity in the best possible way and probably the most awesome NASCAR race I have ever watched in real time. The question on everyone’s mind was, “How can we stop Austin Hill?” The answer turned out to be “using Ross Chastain.” There were so many great drives, but the most shockingly delightful was that of Sheldon Creed, who finally — after 15 second-place finishes in the series — got himself a win. The final laps of this race — as well as Creed’s celebration and post-race interview — are mandatory viewing.

Naturally, the O’Reilly race was not without its stupidities. JGR crewman Alex Morgan was fully hit by Taylor Gray’s car exiting the pit box, but he was unharmed. A significant portion of the other stupidities were caused by Corey Day. My sense of that guy is that he’s a very good dirt racer who has not yet learned to stop dirt racing.

As for the Cup race, while it wasn’t better than the first two, it was an inspiring display of where NASCAR as a whole is at right now, and you can read my full race notes from the track.

I am a Racing America subscriber since last year for their short track stuff, so I wasn’t that sad about the idea of Trans Am going behind their paywall, but I did think it was an own goal at a time when they’re hiring top-tier booth talent and making a thing out of the series’ 60th anniversary. Well, it turns out my imagination was not up to the task. Racing America is opening up its 24/7 stream as a FAST channel, and all the races will be on there live. I feel like a real internet broadcast model for motorsports is starting to take shape.

Admittedly, I don’t watch a lot of racing at this level, but I like knowing there’s a guy in the field who is this serious about his racing. I will remember his name and enjoy seeing it pop up in the news.

Having lived there for a while about a 12 years ago and fled because of what was happening to it culturally, I am deeply bemused by the idea of motorsports on the streets of contemporary San Francisco. It doesn’t sound like Red Bull cared very much about the on-the-ground experience, as obviously this event was primarily intended to be slickly edited for the global internet, but nobody other than the people who got there first could see anything, vehicles were in the fence, and Yuki Tsunoda caught his F1 car on fire doing donuts. All in all, a humongous success for motorsports being motorsports.

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Supercars resolutely remains my overall favorite racing series on Earth. Despite Ford and Chevrolet changing homologation teams and a whole new Toyota Supra making its racing debut, every single outfit looked ready to fight. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Triple Eight hit the ground running as the new Ford HT — or that Broc Feeney won them two of the three races — but what is surprising is that their new customer, Blanchard Racing Team, leapt from last in 2025 to the front of the field. James Golding poled it for the first race, and they would have won 1-2 if Feeney and Triple Eight hadn’t beat them out of the pits.

For Chevrolet’s part, some saw tapping Team 18 as the new HT as a big risk, even though Anton De Pasquale was consistently in the mix last year. Well, he won race 2, so that seems like it’s working out fine.

The Toyota debut wasn’t perfect — they had one engine go pop — but by the last race, all five Supras had finished in the top 10. Not a bad start.

There were some track surface problems that sort of screwed over the support categories, and several main game drivers got severely overheated in the last race, but nevertheless, Supercars reports record attendance, and it was a great all-around event.

Formula E has a very serious new race car coming next year, and rather than punish development mistakes for years as the championship has done so far, it has come up with a more flexible upgrade system that should also make seasons a bit spicier.

Previous generations of Formula E rules have only allowed completely new homologations for mid-rule-cycle Evo updates to the whole platform. Now, instead, the series will give each team allotments of development tokens for specific systems that they can deploy as needed for joker upgrades. This is not only less expensive than having to develop and homologate whole new cars while suffering with the flaws of the current one until the Evo, it means teams will be bringing different updates at different times, which will inject some surprise into the field.